Right

Don’t you love it when you have a gut feeling that turns out to be exactly right? Of course you do! This ‘intuition’ may have arisen because the situation was one you’ve experienced many times before. It’s like the highly specialised doctor who can make a diagnosis in a minute, while others might take days.

It’s a form of Pattern Recognition.

Wrong

Don’t you hate it when your intuition turns out to be wrong? You were so sure the person you spoke with for just a minute was a fraud, but they turned out to be competent.

Wrong pattern!

So:

Why do we love having our opinions confirmed and hate when they’re wrong? It might have something to do with our egos. This is what often happens:

  • You have a gut feeling, an intuition.
  • Your ego searches for confirming information.
  • Your ego defends its position.

This is called ‘Confirmation Bias.’

Right nor Wrong

Intuitions can be very effective, especially in emergency situations.

We’ve all heard stories of ships caught in storms, where the captain (yes, the one with the grey beard, smoking a pipe, and with a parrot on his shoulder) calmly hollers a command that sets the crew in motion and saves the ship. His assessment was right!

Or was it?

  • Couldn’t this captain have avoided the storm in the first place?
  • Couldn’t this captain have hollered a different, even more effective command?

We’ll never know. It’s a ‘Confirmation Trap.’

Knowing

In business, when confronted with a problem or making an important decision, time is your most valuable resource. Certainly, you will have intuitions. And it’s impossible to turn off your ego. What you can do, though, is take the time to put it to the test.

How?

Alter your perspective.

That’s easier said than done! But there are easy ways to approach it. Here are a few examples:

Ask yourself:

‘Why might I be wrong, in more than one way?’’

Use Charlie Munger’s technique:

Invert your thought process.

Ask yourself:

‘Who would be better at this. What would they do?’

If you want to delve deeper (and you know you should!), I recommend the famous book by Edward de Bono called Lateral Thinking.

That’s all,

RvdL